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‘I feel that I did well’ – Cooper

Wallabies fly-half Quade Cooper has defended his performance in his team's 41-13 defeat to the All Blacks in Auckland on Saturday.

Cooper was yellow carded in the 49th minute after he made a high tackle on Aaron Smith close New Zealand's tryline.

A penalty try was also awarded to the All Blacks, due to the indiscretion, and the world champions went on to score 14 more unanswered points during Cooper's stint in the sin bin, via two converted tries from Ma'a Nonu and Conrad Smith.

But Cooper was adament that he was happy with his showing.

“I feel that I did well, I did the job that I needed to do in terms of controlling the team around while I was out there,” he said.

“I’m disappointed with not being able to stay out there for the whole game, that’s the way it’s gone.”

Cooper was jeered throughout the match by the Eden Park crowd but he said that did not affect him.

“It’s professional sport, the crowd hasn’t got anything to do with it,” he added.

“I know we prepared well, my mindset had blocked that out, I’m accustomed to training to that now, I expect that, I expect nothing less than the All Blacks to have a stadium full of 48,000 full of screaming All Blacks fans at Eden Park.”

Cooper didn't return to the pitch after his spell in the sin bin and was replaced by Kurtley Beale who slotted in at inside centre while Matt Toomua took over at fly-half.

“Aaron Smith is a good player, he managed to bust the line, we just needed to make that tackle, we attempted to make that tackle, we scrambled back and I got penalised for that," said Cooper of the high tackle.

“Of course you always hope to go back on but I understood at that stage, I’d been sitting in the bin for 10 minutes, I’d cooled right down, guys were out there trying to keep us in the game.”